All about those design lines

Sony has taken to its official blog to explain why the port got removed, and we're not entirely convinced.

"This is part of the shift to our new Ambient Flow design language," says Sony. "In order to create the beautiful seamless design, our designers needed to remove the headphone jack. Plus, we’re aware of the major market trend toward wireless headphones over wired headphones."

So there you have it – that "seamless design" just wouldn't have been possible with a 3.5mm port in there, despite these phones being thick enough to house such a socket. And the market is trending towards wireless anyway, apparently, so tough luck.

Living the dongle life

Of course we're not privy to the engineering secrets of Sony's mobile team, but Samsung managed to produce a couple of fine-looking, bezel-free handsets this year while making sure wired headphones would still work without the aid of a dongle.

As Sony's FAQ goes on to point out, an adaptor comes in the box, so you can still plug in your existing headphones if you're not ready to join the "major market trend" towards wireless anytime soon. The adaptor supports Sony's Hi-Res Audio technology too, provided you use a compatible headset.

Even without the headphone jack, we're pleased to see the design of Sony's phones moving with the times this year, and we've been impressed by the phone's performance and video capture capabilities.